


Day 14: Comfort - Growing Wild

by 221b_hound



Series: Techienician: Botanical Love [15]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 30 Days of Techienician, Comfort, Comfort Reading, M/M, Poetry, Techienician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 22:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8031664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: Techie wakes from a nightmare. Matt comforts him with a poem.





	Day 14: Comfort - Growing Wild

Techie mostly feels safe on the Finalizer, and safer yet with Matt nearby. But still he wakes sometimes, shivering and weeping from the nightmares of his life in the crime clan.

Matt’s always there, talking low to Techie, telling him everything’s all right and that he’s safe. When it’s been really bad, though, Techie will lie curled in Matt’s arms, shuddering from adrenalin his body doesn’t need.

“I want to help,” says Matt helplessly one bad night.

“Talk to me.”

Matt feels clogged up with words he doesn’t know how to say, though, and he feels stupid just saying over and over that he’ll look after Techie and keep him safe. Techie knows he will.

“Just wanna hear your voice,” says Techie, his lips pressed close to Matt’s ear. Matt’s voice is nothing like the strident, cruel sounds Techie used to hear all those years ago. Matt’s voice is reassurance and kindness. “Doesn’t matter what you say.”

But Matt, feeling his lack of imagination as a failure, needs to say something beautiful. Unable to think of anything beautiful and profound enough, he reaches for Techie’s datapad. Techie likes to read stories and poems; he's forever looking for words in new configurations, spirals and ziggurats and helixes of language, even when he doesn't understand them or their patterns. It’s like he’s hungry for them, and then he shares the choicest with Matt. Matt treasures the shape of every new word Techie teaches him, hoards it with all the other wonderful words that get lodged just behind his tongue. He can't ever make them make beautiful shapes in the air, but in that place behind his tongue, his soul makes poetry with the words Techie gives him.

Maybe there’s something good enough in this book, this treasury of words.

The screen opens on a poem that Techie has been reading. It’s by Holshef, the poet the Empire had once banned and hunted down for writing about _trees_. Matt has no idea that Holshef was considered an enemy and a traitor, though. All he knows is that this poem makes Techie happy, so he reads it haltingly.

“ _The Spine Trees of Pelamir Gorge_ ,” Matt reads the title, then continues.

_The wealth of the crisp scent of winter needles;_   
_The richness of soft sighing songs of rustling winds through the seed-heavy cones;_   
_The prosperity of the earth’s warmth, drawn into far-reaching roots_   
_that hug the shoulders of Lothal, spent sparingly on root tea_   
_which, in sipping, shares Lothal’s heat and heart with me._   
_The capital of these strong-backed spine trees, not rigid but yielding with the seasons,_   
_That great good fortune of the land and all its bounty,_   
_Were not wealth enough for those who wished to eat the earth_   
_And suck out its marrow, and spit desiccated ruin on the rocks._   
_There once was more spine and heart and mind in a green and growing tree,_   
_Than in all the body politic,_   
_the empirical calculations, of those who know no value but gold._   
_Now, beloved valleys lie spineless, bent low with greed._   
_What was mine is mined; what was ours is theirs._   
_Yet Lothal’s riches are rich in me and I am ungardened still_   
_Growing wild._

Techie’s shivers have subsided by the end. He’s smiling softly, eyes closed, safely wrapped in arms and words.

“That’s sad,” says Matt. “Why does it make you happy?”

“Because bad things happened, but he kept the good things inside himself,” says Techie, winding his arms around Matt’s waist.

Matt thinks about that as he kisses the top of Techie’s head; the unruly red hair that like his own is never completely tidy. _Growing wild_ , thinks Matt. And he thinks that his love for Techie is the good thing he keeps inside himself, and for the first time in his life he thinks he might understand poetry, just a little bit.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this Holshef poem, inspired by the descriptions and background in the Wookieepedia:
> 
> http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holshef
> 
> "There's so much the Empire could do to bind the galaxy together, to create a more perfect union of worlds the way the Republic never could. But what has it done instead? Poisoned Lothal's air and water, when protecting them would have only cost a few percentage points of profit. I thought that was wrong, and I thought surely someone in the Empire would understand it was wrong. I thought if I pointed it out, someone would stop it."   
>  ~ Holshef, explaining why he was wanted by the Empire


End file.
